The mid life crisis of Marcos Branza

Thursday, 16 June 2016

I’m not a massively political animal, because in truth it matters very little whether we have one mainstream party in power or another. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing; we’re really a centrist society, and given our diversity, geography and psyche we always will be. We might lean a few degrees one way or the other over time, but the needle rarely swings too far from the middle.

That’s not to say we don’t get excited about certain things, of course. Sovereignty, borders, immigration. Being an island folk we have an institutional-like undercurrent of paranoia about the world over the horizon, and every now and again we go into a bit of a tizz about it all. Maybe we have some collective regression about previous invasion (those bloody Normans, coming over here and giving us modern English), or maybe we just like to get riled up about something.Either way, here we are, getting all excited about Brexit and making the needle swing rather more to the right than usual.There’s been an awful lot said about facts. That neither side of this debate has been entirely honest with them, that those we have had have been either been meaningless at best or dishonest at worst (Mr Gove, I’m looking at you and your £350m porkies), that in reality no one knows what’s likely to happen.All true, and all lies. All at the same time. Have we had facts? Yes. Do people care one jot about them? No. There’s not a single person who understands the likely consequences of Brexit that suggests it’s economically the right thing to do. Not one. Even the Leave camp agree that we’re likely to suffer economically if we exit, at least in the short term. But this isn’t about economics, it never has been. This is about our undercurrent of paranoia. It’s our curtain twitching NIMBY mentality, the ‘some of my best friends are black’ argument. It’s about whether we want to share what we have with Them, that lot, the ones over the other side of sea. The ones that speak differently from us, and look differently from us, and who have different cultures and who wear different clothes. They make us nervous.Forget the facts. It doesn’t matter whether the Poles are actually stealing our jobs, or whether Turkey is actually likely to join the EU, or whether we do send £350m a week over to Brussels. None of it is true (sorry, can't help myself), but it's irrelevant anyway. This referendum won't be decided on facts. It's entirely about emotion: we are collectively terrified of having to share this scepter’d isle with people that don’t look or sound or behave like we do.Which is funny, don’t you think? I’m the grandson of a Syrian immigrant who moved to Italy. I’m the son of an Italian who grew up in Libya. I’m the great grandson of Russians and Poles. My daughter’s grandmother is a Czech from the Sudentenland. Go back just two or three generations and we all – all – have immigrant relations. Our language is Germanic, moulded by Latin and Norse. Our numbers are Arabic. Our political structure is Greek. Our Royal Family is German. Our footballers are from pretty much everywhere except, for the most part, England. What are we protecting from whom?I offer no views on whether the EU – as a structure, as a club, as a facilitator to trade – works. It probably could do with reform. But it does work as a way of making us all believe that we are the same. Whether you are English, or French, or Polish, or Italian, or Czech, or Latvian, or Swedish or Greek, you belong to the EU and you are European. It’s not quite the United Federation of Planets, but hey, small steps. And let’s be honest with ourselves, this referendum was never about whether the EU needed reform. It was never about whether the economic case made sense, or whether we could or couldn’t find trade elsewhere, or whether our mythical sovereignty would be best served by being out on our own. It has always been about keeping the foreigners out. Look at why we’re even having it, a sop to UKIP, a party with no policies and no views that aren’t about immigration. I don’t care whether you vote to Leave or to Remain. In truth, long term it'll have little impact. But you should care why. Please don’t let the needle sway too far to the right.

Monday, 16 November 2015

If, like me, you
tend to regard religion as the refuge of the foolish, then there are really
only two ways to look at life. Either you can say ‘well, it’s all a bit
meaningless, really. What’s the point? I may as well do what I want, when I want,
and to hell with anyone else.’ Or you can say ‘well, yes, it is all meaningless,
in the sense that there’s no overarching reason for us to be here. We were
dust, to dust we’ll return. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make the most of
it while we’re here. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be nice to each other.
Life is short, let’s enjoy it. Let’s be gracious.’

I’m in the latter
camp as, I think, are most of us atheist types. The deists, theists and
polydeists can, and often do, point their collective finger and say ‘ah, but
without belief what moral framework can you have?’ but we all know that’s
bunkum. I know right from wrong. I know a morally good thing from a morally bad
one. I know, fundamentally, what will pain my fellow man, and I know,
fundamentally, what will please him. I’m well equipped to teach La Child how
best to navigate this life, and I think she’s becoming sufficiently adept that
she won’t need to consult a 2,000 year old text to tell her that killing is bad
or that stealing is undesirable or that being generally unpleasant is wrong.

Which does bring
me on to Paris. It’s sad, I think, that it should be such a horrible event that
brings me out of my self-imposed silence (I’ve been away, I had a flat tyre,
there was a terrible storm, etc), but as the images burn themselves on to my
brain and the polemics begin to flow I couldn’t help but wade in. Perhaps it’s
catharsis, or just my way of externalising the disappointment, and the
frustration, and the grief that comes from witnessing madness and failing to
understand it. Perhaps it’s purely self-indulgent, in which case I apologise. Normal service will resume next time.

In the papers
today, a picture of Abdelhamid Abaaoud. A young man, 27 years old, sat in the
front of a car smiling, wearing a heavy woollen hat. The sun bleaches out half
his face. He’s happy, it’s a nice photo. A photo of the man who apparently organised
the deliberate, cruel murder of 129 people, who masterminded the terrorising
and injuring of hundreds more. Who provided the excuse for the bombing of more
others. A picture of a young man who in fact was nothing but a link in the
ongoing chain of attack and retaliation and revenge.

It’s
heartbreaking. As I sit here now and look at the photo I see someone’s son. I
can’t help it, I see someone young and immediately my mind turns to La Child,
and in this case I can’t help but wonder what it would take to turn her into
him. What does it take to turn any of our children into Abdelhamid? Or Omar
Ismail Mostefai, or Samy Animour, or Bilal Hadfi, or Ahmad Almohammad, or any
of the other alleged killers in Paris last Saturday? What happens between a
child’s birth, free of all preconceptions, prejudice and hatred, and the moment
that they walk into a crowded restaurant and fire a Kalashnikov?

Yes, of course religion
plays its part. These are people who have come to believe that what they’re
doing is right. This is their moral
code. Either you believe too or you’re the enemy and therefore are a legitimate
target. Their religion says so. Or actually, no. Their interpretation of their religion says so. I dislike religion, I
think it enslaves you, robs you of the ability to think and to reason, robs you
of responsibility for your own actions, but I don’t for one minute think that
all religion is inherently violent. All religions have had a violent past, but all
also speak of compassion, and fairness, and justice and of respect. Somewhere
along the line people become corrupted not by religion but by their
circumstance. Someone vulnerable (because of their upbringing or their
environment or their mental issues) meets someone persuasive, add in some old
fashioned hatred and bigotry, leave to rest for a few years and voila, lobster:
bloodshed, mayhem, outrage.

If only those with
power would do something positive to help, but no. In the news today, next to
the picture of 27 year old Abdelhamid – a child, for goodness' sake – the main story is France’s ‘retaliation’.
Airstrikes on Raqqa, the bombing of headquarters and camps. ‘We can’t let them
act without reacting,’ says the French military. ‘What happened yesterday,’
said Francois Hollande, the French president ‘was an act of war.’ No it wasn’t, you opportunist tit.
Nation states wage war on each other. Russia can declare war on America.
Gremany can declare war on Great Britain. A group of fundamentalist fruitcakes
can’t wage war. They might spread terror, they might break the law, but it’s
not a war. War justifies retaliatory strikes, war means bombs and strategic
campaigns. War means fighter jets and tanks and infantry and collateral damage.
And so today we have the bombs, and the fighter jets and the collateral damage.
Tomorrow we’ll have the upgraded terror level and the increased police presence.
Next week we’ll have stricter border controls, and then, eventually, another indiscriminate
attack in the middle of Rome, or Baghdad, or London, or Beirut. More death. More
grief. A retaliation for the retaliation, revenge for the revenge. More
outrage, more bombs, and on and on we’ll go in a never ending merry-go-round of
tit-for-tat.

It’s all rather
depressing. I’d usually say something funny now, something positive. Something about breaking
the cycle, education being the key, a slow but determined push to eradicate
radicalism, to reduce the impact of blind faith, a concerted effort to dismantle
the structures necessary to keep people under the yoke of ignorance, but,
really, I do feel terribly depressed today. I can’t honestly see how we’ll ever
reach a more enlightened state, not while we're nothing but a thin veneer of respectability away from the apes.
Evolution, I suppose, will eventually see us right. All will be well, just a
few hundred thousand more years required.

Tuesday, 13 January 2015

Since those three demented fools went on a rampage in Paris last week the Internet has been awash with people getting their knickers in a twist about the giving or taking of 'offence'. On the one side we have what I affectionately call the Whitehouses, adherents to the Mary Whitehouse School of Propriety, or the 'I'm offended by that' Society. Free speech must have limits, they cry. One can't give offence willy nilly. What about child pornography? What about disabilities? What about religion, hmm, hmm?

On the other side we have the Absolutists, who say free speech is the freedom to say what you want when you want to whom you want without repercussions.

I have news, kiddywinkles - you're all wrong. Free speech has limits. Always has had. And it's right that it should, but those limits are there for very good reason. Sorry to break it to you, you odious little ignorant preacher of complete codswallop @anjemchoudary, but 'thou shalt not give offence' isn't one of them.

Once upon a time, in 1919 (at just about half past three) a chap called Oliver Wendell Homes Jr gave an opinion in the case of Schenck v United States. He said:

"[t]he most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."

Ever since then, we've been using the example of an irresponsible fool in a packed theatre to explain when it is that free speech is protected, and when not. Take another look at the quote, and in particular the word 'falsely'. If you happen to be in a packed theatre and there really is a fire then you'd be fairly within the bounds of normal behaviour if you were to decide to shout about it. But if there isn't a fire, then what you're saying is false, and you deal with the consequences.

Why's that relevant here? Well, we don't have an unfettered right to free speech, so all you Absolutists out there, tough luck. Time for bed, off you go, please stop bothering me. And all you Whitehouses out there? You can fuck off as well. Why? Because any limit on free speech is there to protect from a distinct harm, and dealt with under specific legislation. You can't tell lies about someone because that's libel, and you can be rightly sued. Lies can affect people's livelihoods, their reputation, their ability to work and their relationships. Lies are bad. Naughty naughty; Oliver would waggle his finger at you. You can't wander about being racist or discriminatory either. Racism, bigotry, prejudice, it's been the scourge of society for centuries and caused misery to millions. It's morally indefensible and flies in the face of our ideals of equality and fairness. It's also illogical, and frankly that's enough to annoy me. Don't fall foul of the Race Relations Acts, kiddies, or the Disabilities Discrimination Act or a whole bucketful of other legislation.

But what you can do, what you can and should carry on doing again and again and again, as loudly and as widely as you could possibly want, is offend people. I've said this before, and I shall say it again, and again, and again - there is no right not to be offended. You can complain as much as you like that something I say has offended you, but that's your affair, not mine. Offence is taken, not given. "I'm offended!" It's a meaningless whine, a toddler's stamping of the feet.

I've used Mr Fry to illustrate this very point before, but I suffer no shame in using it again:

"It’s now very common to hear people say ‘I’m rather offended by that’, as if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually no more than a whine. ‘I find that offensive’. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I’m offended by that’, well so fucking what?"

You may believe in religion if you wish. Monotheistic, nontheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic or plain old deistic? Believe in the big bearded fellow suffering from a sense of humour failure? Base your moral code on a 2,500 year old book that says wearing a polyester/cotton mix shirt is the devil's work? That's fine, off you trot. Dislike the idea of man on man action? Fickle about the notion of frottage? Not a problem. Find @frankieboyle a bit much? That's your prerogative. But so is it mine to point out the madness of religion and to call you out on the idiocy of your prejudice.

Offence is healthy. Offence is necessary. Another quote, this time from Philip Pullman:

"I think there's a difference between (a) offending people for its own sake, which I don't necessarily want to do, because some people are good and decent and it would be unkind to upset them simply to indulge my own self-importance, and (b) challenging their prejudices, their preconceptions, or their comfortable assumptions. I'm very happy to do that. But we need to be on our guard when people say they're offended. No one actually has the right to go through life without being offended. Some people think they can say "such-and-such offends me" and that will stop the "offensive" words or behaviour and force the "offender" to apologise. I'm very much against that tactic. No one should be able to shut down discussion by making their feelings more important than the search for truth. If such people are offended, they should put up with it".

I'm not saying that we should offend for the sake of it; that is, as Philip Pullman says, unkind. But neither should you seek to stifle debate by the expediency of taking offence. Offence is subjective, offence is hurt feelings. It's not an impact on livelihood, it's not the suppression of a part of society, it's plain old moaning.

Wednesday, 7 January 2015

This morning some people walked into an office and killed some other people.

The people who were killed (Jean Cabut, Stephane Charbonnier, Georges Wolinski, Bernard Verlhac, Bernard Maris and seven more, let's call them the 'Normal People') had been in the habit of drawing cartoons about non-existent characters from a millennia old work of fiction.

This made the people doing the killing (let's call them the 'Fundamentalist Nutjobs') angry, and let's be honest, who can't understand that? We all have out favourite characters from books, don't we? And I can tell you, I get so irate when they do something that's just, well, unexpected. One of my dirty little secrets is a weakness for those Tom Clancy books, you know the ones where Jack Ryan runs about doing rightwing stuff to foil a drug runner or a dark skinned middle eastern type with designs on world domination. And how annoyed do I get when ol' Jack says something out of character, like endorsing free healthcare for example? So annoyed. Or if Harry Potter shouts "Engorgio!" when he should be using "Expelliarmus!", so so very annoying.

You can see, then, why the Fundamentalist Nutjobs would get worked up over some cartoons of their own favourite non-existent, fictitious character from an age old work of fiction. So excuse me, would you, I'm off to shoot Colin Dexter for killing off Inspector Morse.

Before I do, though, RIP Cabu, Charb, Wolinski, Tignous, Maris and the others killed this morning. Have this -

Thursday, 16 October 2014

With apologies to the Pythons, a conversation between me and a helpful soul at Vodafone in Woking last weekend:

Good morning.

"Good morning, sir, welcome to Vodafone!"

Ah, thank you my good man.

"What can I do for you sir?"

Well, I was sitting at home just now browsing through this 'ere iPhone and I suddenly came over all irked.

"Irked?"

Vexed.

"Eh?"

Ere, ah'wor fucked off, like.

"Ah, fucked off!"

In a nutshell. And I thought to myself, 'a little finger waggling bleat will do the trick' and I curtailed my browsing activities, sallied forth, and penetrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the satisfactory resolution of my irritation.

"Come again?"

I wish to make a complaint.

"We're closing for lunch."

Never mind that, my lad, I wish to complain about this 'ere iPhone wot I bought a few months ago from this very boutique.

"Ah yes, the iPhone 5C. What's, er.. What's wrong with it?"

I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. It has 8gb of storage, that's what's wrong with it.

"No no, it's, er...it's, er...."

Don't you dare try to tell me it's just resting.

"Wouldn't dream of it. Why is only having 8gb of storage a problem?"

Why is it a problem? I'll tell you why it's a problem. When I bought it you told me it was 'the same' as the phone I upgraded from. 'It's just newer,' you said.

"Well, it is."

Is what?

"Newer."

Yes. That's lovely, but it has half the capacity of my old phone, so it's hardly the same, is it?

"It is."

It is what?

"The same."

Explain the logic underlying that statement please.

"Well, it's shiny and has buttons and everything."

Yes. Can I store as much stuff on it as I could on the other phone?

"Depends on what you're intending to store."

Tell me.

"Yes, sir?"

Do you in fact believe the statement you just made?

"Yes sir."

Really?

"No, not really, sir."

You don't?

"No, not a scrap of it. I was deliberately lying to you, sir."

So what do you intend to do about it, then?

"Do?"

Yes, do. Something. About it.

"Ah, we can't do anything about it, sir."

And why not?

"Well, it's our policy only to offer exchanges or refunds within 14 days. And it's been longer than that, hasn't it, sir?"

I see. So let me recap. When you sold me this phone you told me a lie.

"Yes."

You told me it was the same as my old phone, but in fact it has half the capacity.

"Yes."

But despite having told me a lie and admitting that you told me a lie you don't intend to do anything about it because I didn't come back here within 14 days?

"Yes."

And the fact that I'm well within the limitation period to make a claim for misrepresentation doesn't alter your thinking in any way?

Sunday, 28 September 2014

You might think that, having ignored this blog for a good 7 months, we'd be fairly far advanced with our give-it-all-up and go-live-in-a-cave-somewhere scheme but, alas, no. Our grand plans, involving giving two fingers to the day job and moving out to the sticks, haven't yet quite come to fruition; too much to do, too little time, chronic excess procrastination. But the fact that La Child is no longer hampered by school timetables does mean that we can occasionally take her off somewhere without it costing the earth or it resulting in a nasty letter and a fine from an irate headmaster.

So, here I sit, on the balcony of a rather nice Spa hotel somewhere in the middle of Bohemia in the Czech Republic, sipping tea like a good little Englishman should and enjoying the view over a lake bounded by sloping pine tree covered hills. It's my mother in law's 85th birthday, and as a birthday treat we've brought her back to her homeland.

My mother in law (or Emily as we shall henceforth call her, because 'mother in law' is too many letters) was born here in the Sudetenland in 1929 and (you may not be surprised to learn this) had to leave in a bit of a hurry back in 1938. Her father was the head a trade union and a member of the social democrat party, which in the late 1930s put him on a collision course with that other lot over the border in Germany. When the Czech government decided that discretion was the better form of valour and went off into exile in England, so did Emily's father, taking Emily, her mother and her brother with him.

Apart from a few weeks in 1946 and a week in 1991, Emily hasn't been back.

All this is really just to emphasise that there's a bit of history here, and La Child has been immersed in it for the past week. In between drinking insufficient quantities of dunkel and eating goulash we've visited Emily's old home (which she left aged 8 in a very big hurry one day back in 1938 without taking anything with her and without realising that she'd never be back), we've had a tour of the town hall (which her father had built and in which he worked), we've met the current incumbent of her father's old office (in her father's old office), we've been given a tour of the town by the director of the local museum, we've learned about the concentration camp that was based here, we've visited the town where La Child's great grandparents were born. Yesterday we drove over the border to Germany to visit relatives that La Child never even knew she had.

Some of this has been met with, well, a certain studied indifference, but beneath the gruff 'see this face? bovvered?' exterior lies a sponge still and it's all going in somewhere. In calmer moments when she thinks we're not looking she'll quiz her grandma about her family, or in passing will wonder how it is people could be so nasty to each other during the war. When talking to her friends we'll hear her describing her day, telling them all about what she's seen and read and heard. No lessons, no workbooks or formality, she just pretends not to pay any attention and learns.

I have to confess that I occasionally have had misgivings about this whole home ed lark. We started off terribly formally but, like everyone who does this, have mellowed with experience and now do very little formal at all. The timetable has gone out of the window, the workbooks sit forlornly, forgotten in a corner. She plays tennis, she climbs climbing walls, she cartwheels and rounds off in gymnastics, but times tables and spelling tests are a thing of the past. There have been times when I've been almost catatonic with concern about that, so conditioned have I been to believe that the only way to know is to be told. But of course it's not the only way. La Child speaks well, can conjugate verbs, can easily work out what change she's due back when she buys something, has a good grasp of history, is comfortable in groups, whatever the age. She knows how GPS works, she understands about triangulation, grasps the basics of flight and can swim like a fish.

Point is, the longer we go on the more comfortable I become that we're doing the right thing. As I sit here on this balcony La Child lies, her chin resting on her palms, just inside the open door talking to a friend on her iPad. She's told him about the trip to Germany yesterday, she's given him a grand tour of the hotel, and she's now telling him all about her grandfather, the leader of a trade union in the 1930s and member of the Czech government in exile during the war. I smile, sip my tea, and enjoy the view over the lake bounded by sloping pine tree covered hills.

Tuesday, 25 February 2014

Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while now (you strange people, you) may recall a post I wrote last summer whilst drinking one too many San Miguel's at my mother's house in Spain. A strange new creature was emerging Gremlin-like from the chrysalis of my lovely innocent daughter; as if in some Faustian nightmare, my little girl's soul was being moulded by a demon's gnarly hands and foul extrusions were beginning to manifest themselves upon a world aghast.

To whit: the teenager. Puberty. Adolescence. Kevin.

Oddly, however, it all came to an abrupt halt shortly thereafter. The physical changes that we were sure would soon accompany the surliness and the antagonism simply didn't materialise. La Child continued to communicate by growls, of course, and she continued to grow. Her face became longer and her gait more assured, but all that knobbly unpleasant pubescent stuff...? No. She remains flat and childlike, and that's just fine, thank you very much.

Apart from one, minor, totally inconsequential little thing.

Boys. She likes boys. She likes them so much that she has adopted one as her pet. She has a boyfriend. What, precisely, does this mean? "Well," she explains, "a boyfriend is someone who doesn't mind being kissed, who loves you and who when you're both a bit older will go on a date with you." Right. And what makes this particular boy your boyfriend? "He stopped running and let me kiss him." There you have it lads: exhaustion equals commitment, and don't you ever forget it.

This Valentine's Day she and her boyfriend exchanged gifts. She to him, a soft toy bear carrying a heart, her own homemade Valentines biscuits, a card 'to my boyfriend' in which she expressed her never ending heartfelt love and devotion; undelivered (she couldn't find a box big enough to send them with and he lives a long way away: shame). He to her, several heart shaped biscuits; undelivered (he sent her a photograph of them, and then ate them). One can see that the commitment levels here may not be perfectly in balance.

It's all very innocent really. But this weekend, under my roof, something slightly less innocent took place. She had some friends over to stay, including a boy we shall, for convenience, call 'The Boy'. La Child had the bed, The Boy had a mattress on the floor. One evening, amazed at the fact that it had all gone a bit quiet, I went up to check on them. At first, all was quiet, all was dark and all seemed normal. Then, like some startled rabbit in the headlights of a swiftly-approaching, toxic-waste-carrying articulated truck, a head popped up from La Child's bed. But it wasn't La Child's head. Oh no. Oh no, no, no. It was The Boy's head, a look of (entirely appropriate) horror on his face. And it was shortly followed by La Child's head, a look of (entirely inappropriate) resigned frustration on hers.

Yes, dear reader, the two of them had been caught in flagrante. Words were said. Measures were taken. Displeasure was felt. The two of them had been 'snuggling', La Child later explained. Slowly falling asleep, entwined in each other's arms. "And what," asked the 8 year old child, "is wrong with that?" Let me count the ways, Child dearest, whilst installing a perimeter of barbed wire around your bed and installing trenches, wire entanglements and other fortifications.

Oh, I know there was nothing remotely sexual about all this. For years now La Child has been jealous of the fact that Lady Branza and I get to keep each other company in bed every night while she is forced to share her bed with cuddly toys and a library. This is about companionship, comfort, feeling warm and loved, I get that. But it is just one more stepping stone on the increasingly swift passage to Grown Up Land. La Child is on a ballistic trajectory to adulthood and it scares me a little. What with an increasing devotion to boy bands, a seeming need to preface everything with the word 'like' and a wardrobe that out of nowhere suddenly includes crop tops and figure hugging leggings ("I'm sorry, in what parallel universe did you think I was going to let you wear that?") I can physically see her childhood floating away on a passing air current.

Regret and sadness I feel, and yes they're mixed with hope and expectation... and a little pride. Pride that she's so confident and content a person, pride that the result of our angst and confusion as parents is a young lady who is independent, and determined, and capable. But it's mostly regret and sadness. My little girl's growing up, and I'm not sure I like it.